Color of Blood(40)

Dennis viewed several more scanned images on the same subject: three were records of phone calls received in the Public Affairs office at the Agency from Garder’s parents demanding more information on their son; two scans showed short letters from Garder senior begging for more information; the last entry was from the congressman and was dated nearly four weeks ago.

Dennis could find no other communication from Garder’s family, though he spent at least ten minutes reviewing the files.

***

He left work early to beat rush hour, not that Marty or anyone else cared about Dennis’s work hours. Pulling out of the huge Langley parking lot, he entered Route 123 and was disappointed to find it already jammed with cars. He snaked across Arlington, Virginia, taking several back roads he had used over the years, but even these seemed crowded. Finally on George Mason Drive, he made the last leg home and pulled up in front of his house just as his neighbor was getting home.

The neighbor, an army colonel at the Pentagon, waved and yelled, “Hi, Dennis.”

Dennis returned a perfunctory wave. Christ, he thought, I can’t even remember his name.

Inside he walked over to the small dining room table and put his weather-beaten briefcase on the chair at the head of the table, just like he had done a thousand times over the years.

Standing in front of the refrigerator, Dennis looked at several pieces of notepaper held in place by whimsical plastic-backed magnets. One of the magnets was a ladybug that held a small strip of paper against the metal door. It was the phone number of the local boy who used to cut their grass. Dennis looked at the numbers and marveled at Martha’s elaborate penmanship; she could turn a simple phone number into what looked like a signature to the Declaration of Independence.

He opened the refrigerator and realized nothing much was in there; he rarely paid attention to household chores like food and cleaning. That had been Martha’s duty, and she had done it well.

Just for a moment, standing in front of the open refrigerator, the cool air swirling against his legs and chest, he felt the presence of his wife and he turned, expecting to see her standing at the sink.

He slowly closed the refrigerator door, waddled into the living room, and sat down on the couch Martha had loved and Dennis had hated. He stared at the darkened TV set and noticed two shafts of late-afternoon sunlight shining through the two small glass panes at the top of the front door. The light beams cut a swath across the gray, patterned carpet, and he could see thousands of dust particles he had disturbed dancing in the beams. He could not remember the last time he had vacuumed.

He felt depressed and worried that he was about to fall into one of those deep, dark holes. Each time he fell in, they seemed harder to get out of.

For a fleeting moment—he would not allow the thought to remain long because it hurt so much—he felt the guilt, sadness, and rage that Martha had left him with.





Chapter 18


“It’s just a little favor,” Dennis said, sitting on a stool in the dimly lit bar in a strip mall in McLean, Virginia. “Small, really.”

“Right,” said the man sitting to his right. “Nothing you ask for is ‘small.’”

“You’re too cynical, Parker,” Dennis said, taking a small sip of his single malt.

“Cynical? Christ, I couldn’t hold a candle to you on that one.” The man laughed. “You’re the Dark Angel of Cynicism, my friend.”

“So I am,” Dennis said, staring down at his drink.

“I was kidding: don’t take it personally. You look tired. How’s your mental health? I hear you got laid pretty low after your wife died.”

“Yeah, well, that’s mostly true,” Dennis said. “But I’m back at work now. Back in the shit, as we say.”

“Got that right,” Parker said.

Dennis looked at the mirror that ran the length of the wall behind the bar. He could see two men hunched over their drinks. The smaller of them did indeed look forlorn. Dennis winked at himself in the mirror and chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Look at those two bozos in the mirror,” Dennis said. “We look like agents right out of central casting—one from the Bureau, the other from the Agency.”

“Hey, speak for yourself.”

“I need some phone records.” Dennis reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. “Here’s the number. I just need activity for the last sixty days. That’s all. No taps, nothing fancy: just inbound and outbound records.”

Parker took a long pull of his drink using his right hand and slid the paper into his shirt pocket with his left.

“That’s a roger,” he said, standing. “We’ll see what we find.”

“Thanks, I appreciate the help.”

“Just do me a favor.”

“Yeah?”

“Look after yourself, OK?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Take up a hobby: go on a vacation. Hell, buy one of those Russian mail-order brides.”

“No, thanks,” Dennis said. “That would be too much work.”

***

“I get computer activity records every week,” Marty said. “Most times I don’t even look at the stupid things. But I looked at yours.”

Dennis just stared; less is always more in situations like this, he knew. Just shut up, he told himself.